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Schrag argues that drilling an escape route for water that has remained trapped in the porous rock for millions of years will help ease the pressure on the rock. "This ancient seawater is very similar to modern seawater, so there should be no ecological impact from letting it out," he says.
The release of seawater from the rock will raise sea levels over time, but not by much, says Schrag. The four million tons of CO2 produced by the plant each year will only cause about a micrometer rise in seawater over 100 years. Even if 1,000 coal plants began sequestering carbon offshore, sea levels should only rise by a millimeter during this time frame, Schrag says.
Dave Goldberg, a research scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, agrees that the idea is sound but says that any pilot project should be carefully shepherded to make sure that there is no harm to the ecosystem. The ocean is so vast that injecting CO2 shouldn't raise water levels much, either by lifting the floor or displacing trapped water, he says, but the bacterial ecology might potentially be changed. "Water slowly percolates through the rock at the bottom of the ocean in many places," Goldberg says. "The impact of speeding this up and introducing new opportunities for water movement is an open research question."
Carbon sequestration remains a controversial issue, however, and many environmental groups worry that it could allow coal plants to earn approval ahead of cleaner energy technologies. Another concern is how sequestration will impact ocean wildlife.
Whether carbon sequestration will become a reality will also be an issue of politics. Schrag was recently appointed to President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Schrag says that carbon sequestration should be one of several ways to combat climate change. "We need it all," he says. "We need renewables, we need better energy efficiency, we need energy conservation, and we need carbon sequestration."
Startup Porifera is developing membranes to separate greenhouse gases from smokestacks.
Despite subsidies and new projects, carbon dioxide sequestration is still a long way off.
Geologists discover that certain rock formations could sequester large amounts of carbon dioxide.
It's simple. Let's just convert all that CO2 into Carbon nanotubes. Then we can make all our clothes from them and stop polluting the air & water with the insecticides from natural fibers and emissions from synthetic fibers. Plus, all our t-shirts would be bullet-proof.
carbon is the basis for our ecosystem and our bodies. Turn it into solid carbon compounds. Add hydrogen and oxygen and you have plastics. Put it into sheets and put resin and you have the carbon equivalent of fiberglass.
Build it into carbon girders for small skyscrapers. FOr larger skyscrapers or arcologies, huge fabricated in place or 'grown' with enzymes carbon tubes can be lifted with balloons like the one proposed for Tokyo bay.
Carbon nanofibers can re-inforce concrete. build sewage and plumbing pipes out of it.
And they have now found that using charcoal or charcoal like carbon compounds added to farm soil dramatically increases yield or restores depleted soils where organic compounds have been lost or never there to begin with.
We're in the process of digging up 7 times the carbon as fossil fuels from the ground vs what is in the air already so is clear we can't just spew filth into the air forever. Make it useful by taking it out of the air and make money doing this.
First, to address the article, I believe it should be done, as an easy and efficient stop a large portion of our CO2 emissions, or as the buzzword has it lately our "Carbon Footprint"
To address the alarmists, this isn't drilling into tectonically active areas, it's sandstone bedrock, not shale. This is actually a lot environmentally safer then drilling for oil anywhere off-shore.
Now, to address the humorous suggestion to turn it into oxygen and carbon nano-tubes. This process requires energy, in fact more energy then the coal plant that produced it as a byproduct makes. In essence what you're suggesting is to make more coal power plants, so we can power carbon nano-tech factories. Ok, not a bad idea, but it doesn't solve the fact that we still have 99% of that CO2 that we don't have the energy/facilities to turn into carbon nano-tech.
I agree with those who point out that earthquakes could release CO2. But, if they used multiple dispersed sites, the risk would be mitigated in the short term. In the long term over a few thousand years, it all gets released.
As a petroleum engineer, I can attest that mistakes will be made and fractures will likely occur at the injection sites on occasion. It's unclear from this article just how large an impact that would have, but it would create leaks of some kind.
But the real bottom line is economics. The project being described is quite expensive of money and energy. Utilities will not likely sequester all of their CO2, but rather just enough to offset costs that are imposed by governments. At some point, rates of return will not favor continued sequestration. My guess is that would occur at a low rate of sequestration.
To date, I have not thought of or learned of a single means of carbon capture and storage that would not require great expense and great energy requirements. While not quite a CCS technology, using CO2 to feed algal biodiesel installations would be the most economic way to make use of this byproduct. The diesel could be used as fuel or as a chemical feedstock. We'll see if the numerous startups on that front succeed in a commercial solution.
Check out A2BE Carbon Capture to learn how CO2 can be made into useful products. Personally, I'm very leery of pumping massive quantities of it into the rocks. Can anybody prove this is going to be stable? Nope. Why not turn that stuff into something useful? Fertilizer, animal feed, biodiesel, oxygen? Carbon sequestration is just letting the energy companies and the fossil fuel companies off the hook for the time being. Shove the problem off to future generations. Public policy needs to get behind this kind of tech, big time. It's looking like the administration is waffeling already. Try extending your time frame beyond 4 years.
I foresee problem with this. They're going to be competing with local "entrepenurers" for prime dumping sites.
I would advice the Harvard Professor to think of other alternative. This a not only going to cost but also increase C02 at the same time. The nett decrease cannot justify the costs and future risks, including polluting the oceans.
I will go for ideas where microbes could convert carbon to useful byproducts. Our plants are the most natural example of converting carbon to food. I dont see why microbes cannot do a much better job.
est Regards
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1 Comment
Seafloor spreading, movement
I had to read the article twice to be sure that they are serious about CO2 infusion into the seafloor. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand the danger by applying the proposed infusion. Seafloor spreading, underground volcanic activities and the slow movement of the plate tectonics should point out that this is a risky procedure. A crack could occur any time and the consequences are very dangerous. I would say plain and simple review your procedure, think it over.
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